IT IS: FORMAFANTASMA

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Tradition

The idea of tradition fascinates us and influences what we do, not because our work is traditional, but because we are interested in understanding the nature of this term and its political significance. To be more precise, we are interested in understanding how tradition becomes a political tool for the construction of ideas like nationalism, localness and identity.
Our approach to tradition is not nostalgic but analytic. Considering how every human activity is the result of a design process, we want to grasp the dynamics of tradition and deconstruct them. It is an exercise of comprehension of the present state of things; for us, looking to the past is a way to understand the present and the dynamics that shape it.

Invention

The idea of invention goes hand in hand with that of originality and authorship; these are very 20th-century ideas, definitely overrated. The designer as a professional – since in spite of himself, but also fortunately, he is an author – suffers from these clichés because they make it hard to categorize multidisciplinary work. In this case, invention is the result of a process of teamwork. Invention also goes with innovation, which in many cases is simply a form of obsolescence disguised as revolution. In over ten years of study, we have the sensation that we have not invented anything at all, and in the end we believe that is just fine.

Sharing

Sharing is fundamental. As designers we should learn from the scientific method, above all in relation to design research conducted in an academic-educational context. Sharing research is an ethical condition that is part of design. In our professional life our thinking will always be more radical and advanced than our work, because it is free of compromises. To share our experience is therefore part of an essential conversation that is trans-generational; especially now, in the middle of a global ecological crisis, sharing of knowledge is a tool to permit ideas to develop beyond the lifetime of the individual author. If we have an ambition, it is certainly not to design objects that survive us, but ideas that can be explored, accepted or rejected beyond the limited time span of our life. So sharing is fundamental, in this sense.

Responsibility

Every profession has its own responsibilities. It is inevitable to ask ourselves about those of designers, because their task is to give form to the world. Designing is a political matter: this doesn’t mean that our work has to necessarily be ideological in all its forms and free of compromises – anything but. Over the years, however, it has been precisely this investigation of the responsibilities of the design discipline that has made our practice evolve, in ways we would not have imagined at the outset. Today the great opportunity for designers is a result of the climate crisis and the unstable reality in which we live. We are confident that soon, or already today, a design euphoria will develop, similar to that of the postwar era.